This fleet of 340 Chinese fishing boats has been depleting marine resources off the Galápagos Islands for years, raising fears for the archipelago's sea life…
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00:00We have been giving them complete freedom over the high seas and they can do whatever
00:07they can do.
00:21Most of the fishing and also the transshipment of fish happens at high seas without our servers
00:29and out of sight.
00:59One of the key things here is that this fleet has been actually outside of the country,
01:19haven't entered to the EEC, however, the resources have been affected as we know all the species,
01:27most of the species, many are highly migratory and they have to come out of these, they don't
01:32respect the borders of countries or anything.
01:34That is actually having a huge impact over sharks and many of the species that are iconic
01:39to Galapagos and they're important for the stability of the whole system.
01:45Galapagos are a key area, that's why some people or some fishers are going actually
01:50because they're rich, they're productive, they are fish.
02:20Some of it
02:50is not legal, for example, there has been reports indicating that these vessels switch
02:57off their satellite communications in breach of regulation, however, most of it is probably
03:05not illegal or just irregular.
03:10Illegal fishing is responsible for a lot of overfishing, but overfishing is a bigger
03:15problem.
03:35Fishing fleets have the technical capacity to fish and catch every single fish in the
03:42world.
03:43That's a problem for everyone, a very serious problem.
04:12We can't see the ocean just as a box of taking resources.
04:25We know now, science is very clear, we are losing the ocean.
04:30Ocean it's acidifying, it's getting warmer, less oxygen and now we're losing and that
04:37is actually the most important threat of the ocean.
04:40We are losing biodiversity by overfishing.